


Off and On

by my_mad_fatuation



Category: My Mad Fat Diary
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, Workplace Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-24
Updated: 2017-10-29
Packaged: 2019-01-22 10:05:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 11,292
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12479104
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/my_mad_fatuation/pseuds/my_mad_fatuation
Summary: It's Finn's job to fix people's computers, but it seems Rae might want something else from him.





	1. Chapter 1

Finn felt a bit uneasy as he knocked on the door of the office on the seventeenth floor, third down from the lifts on the right-hand side. He didn’t usually take calls from people up on the seventeenth floor—they had their own small internal IT department up there—but it was after hours and they were probably all gone by now.

The seventeenth-floorers, as the folks in his department so eloquently called them, generally buggered off by quarter after four in the afternoon, and Finn’s shift started at five, so he rarely had to cross paths with any of them except at company-wide events. Which was a good thing, because they made him nervous.

Even though he knew, rationally, that none of them could actually fire him—they weren’t eighteenth-floorers, after all—he was always worried that they were going to blame him for their malfunctioning computers and try to have him fired anyway.

Nevertheless, he knocked again when there was no answer. He was about to leave after no response, but then the door opened and a curvaceous woman in a silk blouse and high-waisted pencil skirt appeared. He recognized her from some of said company-wide events, but had never actually met her. He did know, however, that her name was Rachel, based on the ticket information he received.

She was holding an iPhone to one ear and held up her other hand towards Finn like she was telling him to wait there. “I don’t care what it takes, just get it done!” she said to someone on the phone before she hung up without saying, “goodbye.”

“Can I help you?” she added, looking at Finn as she lowered the phone from her ear.

“Erm, I was told that you had an issue with your computer?” Finn replied uncertainly.

“My printer, actually,” she said. She opened the door wider for him to enter and walked over towards her desk. “The guys here did updates on all our computers this week, and now my computer can’t find the printer. Can you fix it?”

“I think so,” he said. He stood at her desk and hunched over to use the keyboard, since he didn’t like sitting in other people’s chairs, especially not the ergonomic ones like hers. It was as though he was afraid he would alter the settings just by sitting down.

“Try and print something now,” he said to her once he’d performed his magic—AKA, reinstalled the driver.

He stepped aside to let her sit at her desk and she managed to successfully print something.

“Great, thank you,” she said without turning her attention back to him.

“No problem.” He stood there for a moment, unsure if he should leave or not, since she still wasn’t looking at him. “Well, goodnight,” he said, shoving his hands in his pockets as he headed towards the door.

“Oh, okay,” she said when she finally swivelled around to face him. “Thanks again, erm… Sorry, I don’t know your name.”

“It’s Finn,” he told her, though he was surprised she would even try to learn his name. Most seventeenth-floorers did not bother to know the names of the people on lower floors, especially not like him, all the way down on six.

“Thanks again, Finn.” She flashed him a brief smile and returned her attention to her computer.

***

Finn returned to the office on the seventeenth floor, third down from the lifts on the right-hand side, the following week. If it was rare for him to ever get called up to the seventeenth floor, it was ever rarer for him to get called up to the same office on the seventeenth floor two weeks in a row.

“Finn, hi,” said Rachel when she answered the door. She looked a bit stressed out, but at least she didn’t have a phone to her ear this time.

“Having trouble with your printer again?” he asked as she ushered him over to her desk.

“My word processor,” she said. “It keeps crashing and I need to get this letter drafted _today_ or I’m fucked.” Her choice of words surprised him a little.

“Have you tried rebooting your computer yet?” said Finn. (He had to resist the urge to say, “Have you tried turning it off and on again?” on a near-daily basis.)

“No,” she replied. “Does that actually work?”

“Sometimes,” he said. He hovered over her computer setup and shut it down completely for a minute before he bent down to the tower on the ground and turned it back on again. “Try it now.”

She sat down at her computer and opened her word processor. “Well, it’s working fine for now, but I may need you back up here if it stops again.”

Finn thought for a moment and then grabbed a pen and sticky note pad from her desk. “This is my direct extension,” he said, “so you don’t have to go through the ticketing system again. I can be up here in two minutes if you need anything.”

“That,” she said, lifting up the top sticky note and looking at it, “is good to know.”

***

It was eight o’clock at night before Finn finally decided to start doing some actual work; if Rachel had had a problem with her computer, she would have called by now, so it was safe for him to start a bigger project. He’d just been working on small things and checking Twitter for the past couple of hours in case he needed to be upstairs at a moment’s notice.

Not that he would have given that much consideration to anyone else in need, he thought. He wasn’t sure why he did it, giving Rachel his direct extension. The only people with his number were those in his department, and even then he wished that some of them didn’t have it.

He must have been feeling particularly generous in that moment. Or maybe he just didn’t want to have to deal with a ticket every time her word processor crashed.

Nonetheless, she didn’t call at all that evening. And Finn was mildly disappointed.


	2. Chapter 2

It wasn’t until a few days later that Finn’s desk phone rang—most people contacted him via email, anyway—and at first he was just going to ignore it because he didn’t recognize the number. But then he saw the ID next to it: R. Earl. He remembered seeing that name on the placard outside Rachel’s office and figured it must have been her.

He answered after the fourth ring, to make it seem like he was doing important things and too busy to answer the phone right away.

“Hello, Finn?” said the voice on the other end of the line. “It’s Rae. Up on seventeen. You helped me with my computer a couple of times recently,” she added, like she wasn’t sure he would remember who she was.

“Yeah, hi,” he replied.

“Hi, well, I’m sorry to call your extension, you see, but I can’t get onto my computer so I can’t submit a ticket and—”

“I’ll be right there, don’t worry.”

“Thank you.”

He hung up and realized that was weird. Usually he’d say it would take at least fifteen minutes for him to come fix something, and usually more like an hour, even if he wasn’t busy. (If people really knew how little work he did, they would start to question his salary, and he didn’t want that, obviously.)

But this time he didn’t even try and pretend like he was backed up with work—he just went straight up there. He got to her office within two minutes, and knocked on her door. She answered immediately.

“Come in, come in,” she said, in a seemingly good mood for someone whose computer wasn’t working. She waved him inside and shut the door behind him.

“So what’s the problem this time?” he asked as he walked towards her now-familiar desk area.

“I think I broke it,” she said, biting her thumbnail.

“Broke it how?”

“My leg was getting a cramp, so I sort of swung it around under my desk for a second, and I bumped a cable or something and the screen went black.”

“Oh,” he said, “you probably just loosened the cable for the monitor.”

“Is that bad?” she asked, her hand still in front of her mouth.

“Nah. It’ll just take me a second to fix it.”

Finn pushed her ergonomic chair out of the way and got down on his hands and knees under the desk. Once he was under there, he realized he couldn’t see anything, so he pulled his phone out of his pocket and used it as a torch. He found the monitor cable and plugged it back in before crawling out from under the desk.

“It should be working now,” he said as he stood up. He took a look at the monitor on her desk, and it was back on. Once he was on his feet, however, something occurred to him.

“The cable wasn’t just loose; it was completely unplugged,” he said out loud, mostly to himself. He looked over at Rachel who was leaning against the filing cabinet casually like that information didn’t surprise her.

“Was it?” she said.

“Did someone come in and physically unplug your monitor?” he asked, frowning in confusion.

“Not to my knowledge,” she said before taking the clip out of her hair. She shook her head to let her hair cascade down her shoulders in soft waves. “But it’s been a long day, so who knows.”

“Do you always work this late?” said Finn.

“Only occasionally,” she said, “but more so recently. Deadlines have just been piling up.”

He nodded as if he could relate to the pressure, though he could not. His job was pretty relaxed about 97% of the time.

“It’s just been so stressful lately,” she continued as she removed her cardigan, revealing that her blouse underneath was sleeveless. She tossed the cardigan aside and it landed on an indoor plant, which bowed slightly under the weight. “You get it, right?”

“Sure…” he said slowly.

“You married?” she asked, standing with one hand on her waist.

“Erm, no…” he replied. He took a step back and bumped into the edge of the desk behind him.

“Ever been married?”

He shook his head.

“That’s probably for the best,” she continued. “It’s so hard to maintain a healthy relationship when you work these kinds of hours.”

“I guess.”

She looked down at her left hand. “God, why am I still even wearing these?” she said, and started pulling the set of rings off her finger.

Finn hadn’t noticed them before, but she tossed them into the base of the plant that was now a holder for her clothing and accessories, apparently.

“I should have done that two weeks ago,” she added.

“Are you—I mean, is everything all right?” he asked.

“It’s fine,” she said as she swept her hair off her face. “The last seven years of my life have been a lie, but other than that everything is great.”

He turned his attention towards his shoes because he wasn’t sure how to respond to that, when clearly everything was not great. He didn’t notice her approaching until she was right in front of him.

“Finn,” she said quietly, and he looked back up at her. He hadn’t realized how tall she was, but he had to lift his gaze upwards to make eye contact when she was this close because of her heels.

“Yeah?” he replied, gripping the edge of the desk behind him.

“Do I make you nervous?” she asked, brushing his shoulder like she was sweeping away a speck of dust.

He swallowed hard. “N—No.”

She smirked a little. “You’re absolutely adorable, you know that?” she said as she started unbuttoning the top of her blouse.

“Erm, what are you doing?” he asked, looking towards the door to double-check that it was closed and no one could see them.

“Isn’t it obvious?” she said. “It’s not as though my monitor cable unplugged itself.”

He looked back up at her and frowned in confusion. “What?”

“Do you honestly believe that I wouldn’t think to check the cable connection first if my monitor wasn’t working?”

“Are you saying that you unplugged it?” he said. “Why would you—?”

“Look,” she cut in, tracing her finger down his chest. “Although my husband and I have only been separated for two weeks, we haven’t been _together_ in months… And I haven’t been satisfied in years.”

He finally understood. “Oh, well, erm, I’m flattered, really, but—”

“But I’m not attractive enough,” she said with a sigh.

“That’s not—”

“No, I get it. It’s fine.” She pushed her hair back behind her shoulders and started refastening her top.

“Rachel—”

“I prefer ‘Rae,’ actually,” she said, heading towards the plant to pick up her cardigan.

“Okay, Rae, look, it’s not that I don’t find you attractive,” he continued as he took a step away from the desk. “But we don’t even know each other.”

“That hardly matters,” she said with a sarcastic laugh.

“Well, couldn’t we, you know, get in trouble?”

“For what?”

“For doing… that… on company property,” he said. “Plus we’re co-workers, sort of, so we’d probably have to tell someone that we’re in a relationship, and—”

“Wow, you are completely overthinking this,” she said. “First of all, I never said anything about a _relationship_ , Finn; I was talking about _fucking_. And second, if you think that people aren’t _fucking_ in this building all the time, then you don’t know shit.” She pulled her cardigan on and un-tucked her hair from the back of it, shaking it out with her hands.

“You do this a lot, then?” he asked.

She laughed again. “Goodness, no,” she said. “I just thought that you were cute, and I’m single now, pretty much, so I figured… But it was stupid, so I’m sorry.”

“It wasn’t stupid, I just… I was surprised.”

“It’s fine. You can just go back to your work and I’ll head home to my empty flat and drink until I’ve forgotten about this.”

“Rae…”

She turned and looked at him for the first time since he turned down her advances. “What?”

“I don’t give my direct extension to anyone, you know,” he said. “Ever.”

“Well, I’m sorry for misusing it, then.”

“No, that’s not what I—I mean, I gave it to you because I wanted you to call me. I wanted to—I wanted to see you again.”

“Okay…” She stood with her arms folded like she was unimpressed.

“So, I guess what I’m saying is,” he continued, “does that door have a lock on it?”


	3. Chapter 3

Finn disliked most company-wide events because they typically meant that he had to come into work early to attend it, but he’d still have to stay to the end of his usual shift. Sometimes that meant coming in at noon, then killing time for a few hours before starting his shift, but this time he only had to come in at three, so it wasn’t quite as bad. Besides, this was a retirement party—for someone he didn’t know up on fourteen—which meant there would be free food and only a couple of speeches. He could live with that.

Izzy, his friend and daytime counterpart, would usually hang out with him at events like this, and they would swap stories about the most un-tech-savvy people in the building and see how much free food they could swipe. It was a finely honed system that made these events semi-bearable.

Unfortunately, Izzy was sick this day, so Finn was left hovering by the refreshments tables by himself, trying to resist the urge to check his phone every thirty seconds.

He’d just succumbed to the temptation of his phone for the sixth time when he heard a familiar voice talking nearby. He looked around for a second before he spotted her; Rae. He hadn’t seen or heard from her in three weeks, not since the whole monitor cable incident.

He watched as she approached the refreshments table, chatting with someone like she was having a great time, until he must have caught her attention, because she looked right at him and stopped. He smiled tensely at her; he wasn’t sure how to proceed in this situation. Were they supposed to greet each other? Would she introduce him to her colleague or would she pretend she didn’t know him?

“Excuse me,” she said with a polite smile, indicating with her finger that she wanted to get past him to the coffee urn on the table.

“Right, sorry,” he muttered as he moved out of the way.

She brushed past him and continued talking to her colleague, which seemed to answer his question.

He didn’t feel like standing there, pretending not to know her, so he went over to where other people in his department were sitting and joined them. None of them took these events too seriously—it wasn’t as though any of them were going to get a huge party when they retired—so he enjoyed conversing with them and making fun of folks on the upper floors.

When he noticed a couple people starting to set up near a podium at the front of the room, he excused himself to use the washroom so he could get out of there before the speeches started. He had to take a leak anyway, so it seemed like as good a time as any. Upon exiting the men’s room, however, he was surprised to see Rae standing in the corridor, like she was waiting for him.

“Come with me,” she said, nodding towards the lifts before heading in that direction herself.

Uncertainly, Finn followed her into one of the lifts where she pushed the button for the seventeenth floor. “What’s this about?” he asked.

“I have a small computer issue that needs resolving,” she said, facing the lift door with her arms folded.

“Right now?”

She didn’t say anything else before the lift opened on the seventeenth floor, and she led him towards the third office on the right. She held the door open for him to enter and shut it behind him, turning the lock when she did.

“So…” he said awkwardly, looking around the room. “What’s the computer issue?”

“Don’t play dumb,” she said as she gave him a small shove, causing him to stagger backwards for a second and turn his attention to her. “We haven’t got all day.” She quickly slipped off her three-quarter sleeve blazer and folded it neatly before draping it on the back of her chair.

“Hold on,” he said when she started unzipping the back of her skirt. “Should we maybe talk about what happened last time I was here—”

“I’d rather re-enact it, wouldn’t you?”

“Well, yeah, but I mean, I thought it was supposed to be a one time thing.”

“It was,” she said. She shimmied her skirt down her legs anyway. “But then I saw you today and I decided it wasn’t anymore. Is that a problem?”

He didn’t answer right away, as he was a little distracted by the gap between her thigh-high stockings and her knickers. “Erm, no, not a problem, exactly…” he finally said, shifting his focus back to her face.

“In that case,” she said as she grabbed the front of his shirt, “get over here.”

***

Finn felt a little conflicted as he pulled his trousers back on.

“Do you think maybe we should stop hooking up like this?” he asked Rae, who was also getting dressed.

“You want to stop?” she said, seeming a little surprised.

“I mean here, in your office,” he clarified. “It’s the fifth time in two weeks and we’re bound to get caught.”

She laughed a little. “We’re not. Don’t worry.”

“It’s just, I was thinking,” he continued, scratching the back of his head, “maybe we could, you know, do stuff together outside of work…”

“Finn, are you asking me out?” she said. “Because you know that’s breaking the rules.”

“What rules?”

“The unspoken rules about our arrangement.” She swept her hair up in one smooth motion and clipped it at the back of her head. “ _This_ ,” she added, gesturing at the air between them, “stays right here, in this office. Outside these walls, we don’t know each other. Got it?”

“You ashamed of me or something?” he asked as he looked down to button up his shirt.

She exhaled loudly and shook her head. “This has nothing to do with you, Finn,” she said.

“Oh, well, thanks, then,” he replied sarcastically.

“Fine, we’ll stop, if that’s what you want.”

“That’s not what I said.”

“So you’re willing to play by the rules, then?” she said. “No contact outside of work, yeah?”

“Yeah,” he said with a sigh.

“I’ll call you next time I’m working late, all right?”

“Great,” he grumbled as he headed towards the door. “See you then.”


	4. Chapter 4

Even Finn had to admit, he was not the most social person in the world. Most of the time he would rather be at home on his computer than out in the world talking to people, and with the hours he worked, he almost never got to see his friends IRL. That being said, he did enjoy those rare occasions where he and some of his mates were able to get together in the pub on the weekend.

This occasion was particularly rare, however, because standing in front of him as he headed towards his friends’ table with his hands full of drinks was none other than Rae, from the seventeenth floor. It was the first time he’d seen her outside of work since they started their regularly recurring rendezvous—in fact, it was the first time he’d seen her outside work ever. He quickly looked away, hoping he hadn’t caught her eye yet, though it wouldn’t make a difference if he had anyway. She still wouldn’t acknowledge him out of the office, that much he knew.

He could see most of the pub from where he was sitting once he’d returned to his table, and watched her as she ordered a drink and took a seat at a high table for two by the far wall. She looked like she was waiting for somebody, and he felt a twinge in his gut when he thought that maybe she was supposed to be on a date. He’d sort of assumed she wasn’t interested in dating anyone so soon after her separation, but maybe she just wasn’t interested in dating him.

He only paid half his attention to his friends around the table, keeping an eye on Rae as the others chatted. She was still sitting there alone after at least twenty minutes. She would check her phone, look up at the door, take a sip of her drink, and then check her phone again.

After checking her phone for the umpteenth time since she got there, she scanned the pub, stopping only when her eyes landed on Finn. She appeared startled to see him there. He smiled apologetically at her, and lifted his eyebrows as if to say, “What are the chances?”

She quickly returned her attention to her phone and didn’t look up again for several minutes, and even then it was only to check the door.

When one of Finn’s friends suggested they turn their evening into a pub crawl, Finn declined politely and stayed behind as the rest of them left. He sat finishing his drink for a moment before picking it up and walking it over to Rae’s table. He set it down and took a seat on the barstool across from her.

“Hi, there,” he said to her. “What’s your name?”

“What?” she said when she looked up from her phone, clearly surprised by his presence.

“Well, seeing as we don’t know each other, I thought I would ask what your name is,” he explained.

“Very funny.” She looked at the door again. “I’m expecting someone any minute now, so…”

“It looks to me like you got stood up.”

“Thank you for your unwelcome opinion,” she said, “but he’s probably just running late.”

“Who?”

“A friend of mine.”

“And your friend, he doesn’t have a phone? He can’t text you to say he’s running late?” he said.

“It’s fine,” she replied, turning her head to look at him.

“Well, I’ll just sit here and keep you company until he gets here, then,” he offered.

“I’m pretty sure this is breaking our rules.”

“Fine, I’ll go if you want—”

“Wait,” she said as he started to stand. “You can stay for a minute. Just until my friend gets here.”

“If you like,” he said, settling himself back on his seat.

She finished the last of her drink and set the empty glass on the table in front of him. “And get me another one of these.”

***

Nearly an hour had passed since Rae arrived at the pub, and her friend who was supposedly “just running late” had still not appeared. Yet Finn noticed that she had stopped compulsively checking her phone and the door for a good fifteen minutes now.

“Okay, okay,” she said, setting down her drink with a laugh. “Do you know Lucy down on sixteen?”

“I think you mean _up_ on sixteen, and no, I don’t,” he replied, amused even though he hadn’t heard the story yet.

“Well, I was talking to her once and she actually asked me how long it takes for an email to get through the _Internets_ , because she wanted to send one to somebody for their birthday the following day and wasn’t sure it would get there on time.”

“You know how unreliable the _Internets_ can be,” he said, chuckling.

“I assume you have to deal with people like that every day, though,” she said.

“Actually, I don’t have to deal with many people at all. I mostly do behind-the-scenes maintenance, with only the occasional ticket from someone working late,” he said.

“I’d imagine not all your calls are as exciting as the ones from me,” she said. “Then again, for all I know, you have a similar arrangement with half the women in the building.”

“Is that what you think of me?”

“Well, you have options, is all.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“My colleague, Chloe—she works two offices down from mine—anyway, she saw you at the retirement party a few weeks back and thought you were, quote-unquote, _absolutely delicious_.”

“Erm, okay…” he said, looking down at his drink in embarrassment.

“Yeah, so once you’re bored of me, you can just move on to the next one,” she said.

“I don’t think that’s gonna happen.”

“Which? Getting bored of me or moving on?”

“Both.”

“Fine, once I’m bored of you, then,” she added, though when he looked at her she was smiling like she was teasing him. “Anyway, seeing as I’ve clearly been stood up tonight, would you like to continue this conversation elsewhere?”

“Like where?” he said.

“Like my flat.”

***

Finn and Rae took an Uber to her flat, which was the first time he’d ever taken one. He was much more into public transit, but didn’t argue with her since she was paying. The size and location of her flat surprised him a little, too, and he figured she must earn a lot more money than he did in order to afford it.

She didn’t really give him a tour, though. He just sort of caught a glimpse of the open concept living space and kitchen on the way to her bedroom.

It wasn’t until she pushed him backwards onto the bed and started undressing that he really noticed what she was wearing; her attire was not as formal as her workwear, but still classier than a pub like that required. She must have been waiting for a date after all, he thought. Was he her consolation prize for the evening?

“Wait, Rae,” he said, sitting up and grabbing her hands. “Talk to me for a second.”

“We’ve been talking for an hour,” she said as she gently pulled her hands free from his grasp. “I’d rather not talk anymore.”

“Just tell me, who were you waiting for tonight?”

She sighed and folded her arms. “If you must know, I was waiting for my husband,” she said.

“Why?”

“None of your business,” she replied tersely.

“Alright, I’m sorry I asked.” He leaned forward with his elbows on his knees, wishing he could have just left well enough alone. He felt her take a seat next to him and turned his head to look at her.

“Sorry, but it’s just personal stuff, and I don’t want to bore you with it,” she added.

“You don’t have to tell me anything,” he said, “but just know that you can if you want.”

“Thank you,” she said, placing a hand on his leg gently, “but I don’t want to think about it right now. I just want this.”

He picked up her hand and lightly kissed the back of it. If he was going to be her consolation prize for the night, he might as well be a good one.


	5. Chapter 5

When Finn woke up, he was a little disoriented to find that he was not in his own bed, and he was not alone. He quickly remembered how he ended up in this situation, though, so it wasn’t too alarming. That being said, this had not been what he was expecting when he went out to the pub with his mates the previous night.

He rolled to his side and picked up his phone that he’d left on the nightstand to check the time. It was barely seven o’clock, which was quite early for him, but then again he usually didn’t get to bed until two or three most nights. Looking at his phone, he had a couple of text messages that weren’t important, and what was probably a pocket-dial from Izzy that he didn’t check right away.

“Finn?”

He looked over his shoulder at Rae, who had rolled around to face him but still looked groggy. “Sorry, did I wake you up?” he asked.

“Yeah,” she said with a yawn.

“Sorry,” he repeated, setting his phone down and turning so he could put his arm around her.

She frowned a little, but he couldn’t tell if she was upset or just squinting in the morning light. “I don’t really do this, in case you couldn’t tell,” she said.

“Do what?”

“Entertain overnight guests.”

“Oh,” he said, letting his arm fall away from her. “Do you want me to go?”

“Kind of…”

“Erm, okay, then…” He rolled back to the edge of the bed and sat up, swinging his feet out onto the floor. He had to press the heel of his hand into his eye to combat the dizziness from sitting up too fast.

“I mean, no offence, it’s just, I have a lot to do today and—”

“It’s fine. So do I,” he said, although that was a lie. He never did anything on Sundays.

He could feel her sit up in bed behind him as he picked up his trousers off the floor and pulled them on.

“I’ll get you a car—”

“I can take the bus.”

***

Finn didn’t answer his desk phone right away when it rang Thursday night. He’d looked at the caller ID—R. Earl—and decided he didn’t really feel like dealing with it that evening. But when she called for the third time in as many minutes, he picked up.

“What?” he said into the receiver.

“Hello to you to,” said Rae.

“I’m busy, so make it quick.”

“I’m having an issue with the web-browser on my laptop,” she said. “It keeps freezing.”

“Submit a ticket and I’ll get to it when I have a chance,” he replied.

“And when will that be?” she asked. She sounded a bit annoyed, which made him smile a little. He had the upper hand for once.

“Probably about an hour,” he said, even though he didn’t have any pressing matters at hand.

“I’d like to be home by then,” she said. “Can’t you just come up for a second and take a look at it?”

“At your frozen web-browser?”

“Yes.”

He let out a sigh of exasperation and rolled his head back. “Fifteen minutes.”

“Ten.”

“Fine, I’ll see you in ten.”

***

It was only eight-and-a-half minutes before Finn arrived at Rae’s office, so he considered waiting in the hallway for ninety more seconds but then realized that would be stupid and knocked on the door.

“That was quick,” said Rae when she answered.

“Yeah, well I’m quite busy today, so let’s just get this over with,” he replied, stepping past her forcefully.

“Okay…” she said slowly after closing the door behind them. “Well, like I said, my laptop—”

“I don’t really have time for this game right now, so why don’t we cut to the chase?” he said as he began unbuttoning his shirt. “I can give you ten minutes, including foreplay.”

“Excuse me?”

“Fine, twelve minutes.”

“That’s, er, not why I called you up here tonight,” she said.

“What?”

“I just need my web-browser fixed before I go home,” she added, heading over to her desk and opening the laptop sitting in front of her desktop monitor.

“You’re kidding,” he said, dropping his arms at his sides.

She shrugged apologetically before he came over to look at her laptop.

“You said that it keeps freezing?” he asked, hunching over the desk.

“Yes.”

“Well, you have about eighty bazillion tabs open.”

“Is that a problem?”

“It probably doesn’t help,” he said. “Just give me a second…” He tried a couple of things that didn’t fix it, and one thing that did.

“There,” he added as he stood upright again. “That should work for a while, at least.”

“Thank you.”

“Don’t worry about it…”

“Finn,” she said, taking a step closer to him.

“Yeah?” he replied as she reached out and touched him on the chest.

“You ought to button up before you go back downstairs.” She started fastening the buttons on his shirt that he’d undone earlier.

He was still a bit surprised that she had really only called him up to fix her computer, and wondered if that meant that what they had—whatever it was—was over. “Thanks…” he said dejectedly as he took over for her on the last couple of buttons.

“I wanted to say thank you,” she continued.

“You already did,” he said.

“I mean for Saturday. You were there for me when I needed someone, and I appreciated it,” she said.

“You needed someone,” he echoed. “Not _me_.”

“Finn—”

“I’m just a placeholder.”

“I thought—I thought you understood,” she said. “This isn’t a relationship, it’s—”

“It’s _just_ _fucking_ , I know,” he cut in. “But it’s not anymore, is it? I mean, you can’t tell me that we’re not allowed to know each other outside this office and then thank me for spending the night with you when you get stood up!”

“So what are you saying?” she asked. “You don’t want to see me anymore?”

“I’m saying I don’t want to be your _backup plan_ anymore,” he said. “You can choose all of me or none of me, but you can’t have it both ways. You have to pick one.”

“I’m sorry, Finn, but you know I can’t be serious with anyone right now,” she said. “I’m not even divorced yet, and this job… It’s just too much.”

“Fine,” he said as he headed for the door.

“Why does it have to be all or nothing?” she added, grabbing him by the arm to stop him from leaving.

He turned to look at her. “Because it does.”


	6. Chapter 6

When Finn tried to pull away, Rae tugged him closer.

“All, then,” she said.

“What?”

“I said, all. I choose all.”

He eyed her suspiciously. “Really? But what about all that stuff—”

“I don’t know how this is going to work, with our jobs and everything. But you aren’t just a backup plan, Finn,” she said, still holding his arm, though less forcefully now. “You are so much more than I bargained for. You’re more than I thought I deserved, honestly.”

“More than you deserve?”

“You’re sweet, and thoughtful, and compassionate,” she said. “And great at… you know… _stuff_.”

“And what makes you think you don’t deserve all that?” he asked, looking away shyly at the mention of _stuff_.

She let go of his arm slowly. “Well, I’ve never had it before.”

“But everyone deserves to be happy, right?” he said as he glanced back up at her.

“I don’t know if I believe that…”

“You,” he added, stepping closer so he could slip his arms around her waist, “deserve to be happy. I’d like to make you happy.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“How happy?”

***

As far as Finn could tell, Rae was—for the moment—happy. Or, at the very least, satisfied. Thoroughly.

The way she firmly held onto the top of his head suggested to him that he was doing something right, and when he slipped a finger inside her, she let out an contented moan that he found encouraging. She grew louder as he continued, and by the end she was crying out his name in ecstasy. For a second, he vaguely wondered if his colleagues down on six could hear her. He almost hoped that they could.

He stood so he was eye-level with her and she pulled him closer by the waistband of his trousers. “What now?” she asked.

“Now,” he said as he put his hands over hers and gently pushed them away, “I really need to get back to work, or people are going to start asking questions.”

“Are you sure?”

He nodded. “You working late again tomorrow?”

“I have plans with friends tomorrow night,” she said before chewing on her lip pensively. “We could—I mean, maybe… you could come over to my place on Saturday?”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“It’s a date,” he said with a smile.

***

After leaving Rae’s office, Finn headed straight to the nearest men’s room to clean up—he didn’t want to go back to work seeming like he’d just been doing what he’d been doing. He hadn’t noticed anyone else there until he was washing his face and looked up at the mirror.

A man in a suit walked up to the sink next to him to wash his hands, though he was smirking a little. “Is your name _Finn_ by any chance?” he said.

“Er, yes…” Finn replied slowly as water dripped from his face. He pulled a paper towel out of the dispenser to dry off.

The man looked like he found this amusing, as though it were some joke that only he was in on.

“How did you—?” Finn began, but stopped when he realized. “Oh, shit,” he muttered, looking down at the sink.

“Relax, buddy,” the man said as he dried off his own hands. “I won’t tell anyone.”

“Thanks…”

“So who was it?” he asked. “Was it Chloe? She’s kind of severe, but I’ll bet she’s a firecracker, right?”

“I’ve, er, got to get back to work, so…” said Finn, discarding his used paper towels in the bin.

“You work in tech support, I’m guessing,” the man continued, like their conversation wasn’t over. He looked Finn up and down, making it clear he was referring to the discrepancies between their respective outfits. “Can I just ask a, er, technical question?”

“Look, if you need something fixed, submit a ticket, otherwise—”

“What’s your secret?”

“My secret?” said Finn.

“How’d you get her to—I mean, my wife never…”

“Er, I should probably…” Finn pointed to the door to indicate he wanted to leave.

“It’s a little better with my girlfriend, but still—”

“I really have to go.”

***

Rae almost looked surprised to see Finn when she answered the door of her flat on Saturday. “Finn, hi,” she said, taking a step back.

“Is this not—Am I here at the wrong time?” he asked.

“Er, no, not exactly, I just, I haven’t gotten dressed yet,” she replied as she let him in.

He took a look at her; she appeared to be dressed, for all intents and purposes. She was wearing an oversized t-shirt and leggings, which, granted, was not her usual, but it was Saturday after all. “You look fine to me,” he said.

She smiled. “Well, I was planning on looking better than this when you got here. You are just annoyingly on time.”

“Sorry.” He smiled back. “But I don’t think it’s possible for anyone to look better than you look right now.”

“Sweet-talker, huh?” She grabbed the hem of his shirt and pulled him in for a kiss.

“I did want to talk to you, though,” he said when their lips parted.

“Sure,” she said, and kissed him again.

He laughed a little. “Seriously.”

She leaned back to look at him. “Okay, then,” she said. “What did you want to talk about?”

“Should we, er, sit down, maybe?” he suggested, and she led him towards the couch.

“Is it something bad?” she asked as they sat down. “I’m afraid it’s something bad. Oh, god, just tell me, or I’m going to freak out and—”

“It’s not bad, it’s just…” he began. “We were almost caught at work the other day.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean some guy on your floor, well, heard us,” he said. “He figured out that it was me, though he thought I was with someone named Chloe, actually, but it was a close call.”

“So?” she said.

“We ought to be more careful. Maybe we—We should probably think about telling someone about us, before it gets out some other way, right? We could get in trouble, couldn’t we?”

“You’re worrying too much about this.”

“And you’re not worrying enough, it seems.”

“Look, I just don’t think we’re ready to make anything official,” she said. “We haven’t even been on a date yet.”

“What about that night at the pub?”

“That wasn’t a date, that was just two people who happened to run into each other at the pub—”

“And then just happened to spend the night together?” he said.

“Well, yeah.”

“What about this? Is this not a date?”

“I don’t know what it is, but I’d rather not let anyone know until—I’m not sure, maybe never,” she said.

“You never want to let anyone know that we’re seeing each other?” he asked incredulously. “Like, _anyone_?”

“Not yet, anyway…” she replied. “I just want to see if, well, if this is even anything, you know? Before we go announcing to the world that we’re involved. I’d like to know how involved, first.”

“And this has nothing to do with…”

“With what?”

“With you being ashamed of me?”

“Why do you keep thinking that I’m ashamed of you?” she said.

“Because,” he said, “there’s some disparity in our lifestyles.”

She folded her arms across her chest. “Like what?”

“I mean, your job, your flat, everything is just so much… _more_ than mine.”

“So, what, I need to apologize now because I make more money than you?” she said. “Grow up, Finn.”

“I’m not saying that!” he said. “Just, you need to recognize that we’re different, and that maybe it’s skewing your judgment of the situation.”

“I told you before, this has nothing to do with you!” she said as she stood up angrily, clenching her hands into fists.

“It has to have _something_ to with me, otherwise why are you with me at all?” he replied, standing as well.

“I don’t know!”

He was surprised by her response. “Fine, then. Don’t be.”


	7. Chapter 7

“Wait,” Rae said as Finn started to leave. “Don’t be like this.”

“Like what?” he asked impatiently, stopping to look at her again.

“So dramatic all the time,” she said. “Can’t we talk about this instead of you just running off?”

“I don’t even know why I’m here.”

“Because I invited you.”

“Yeah, and why is that?”

“When I said I chose all of you, I wasn’t lying,” she said. “I’m just still trying to figure out what that means.”

“It means you can’t keep me hidden away, like a dirty secret,” he said.

“But I like having dirty secrets with you,” she teased, poking him in the arm to lighten the tension.

And it worked; he smiled a little. “Okay, _some_ secrets are alright,” he said as he grabbed her finger playfully to keep her from poking him again. “But I don’t want to be one of them.”

“I’m not trying to keep _you_ a secret,” she replied more seriously. “I’m trying to keep _us_ a secret. Things are complicated right now.”

He sighed, still holding onto her hand. He couldn’t really understand what was so complicated about it, but that may just have been because he’d never been separated—or even married—or in a high-pressure job.

“Alright,” he said after a minute. “We can keep _us_ a secret. For now.”

She squeezed his hand back and he pulled her closer. “Good,” she said.

“But that means we have to stop hooking up in your office, don’t you think?”

***

As Rae pushed him up against the window, Finn was grateful for two things: One, that it was unlikely anyone could see them all the way up on the seventeenth floor; and two, that he knew the window was a double layer of reinforced glass, so he probably couldn’t get pushed right through it.

He hadn’t come up here for this, though. She really did have a computer issue, it was just that they sort of didn’t get to it right away.

When he got to her office that evening, she seemed a little stressed out. She answered the door in her sleeveless blouse, with her hair down around her shoulders, like she’d given up for the day.

“You alright?” he asked as he walked in and she shut the door behind him.

“Yeah,” she said, tugging on a fistful of hair near the root. “It’s just, I have this deadline tomorrow and I can’t even get the thing to work and—”

“Come here,” he said. He gently pulled her hand out of her hair and drew her in for a hug. “I’ll fix the thing, just relax.”

She softened into the hug and he rested his chin on her shoulder. “Thanks,” she said with a sigh of relief.

He lifted his head to look at her as he brushed her hair away from her face. “That’s what I’m here for,” he replied before kissing her.

It was intended to be one little kiss, but it led to another, and then another, and the next thing he knew he was getting shoved up against the window as they frantically tried to undress each other.

They didn’t get very far in this process, however, before there was a knock at the door.

Rae swore under her breath as she tried to tuck her blouse back into her skirt. Meanwhile, Finn picked up his plaid over-shirt off the floor and put it back on.

“Go fix my computer!” she hissed at him, pointing towards her desk.

“What’s wrong with it?” he asked in a whisper.

“The mouse isn’t working right,” she said quietly before there was a second knock at the door. “Just a sec!” she added, louder.

She got Finn set up at the desk quickly—she even had him sit in her chair, which made him feel weird—and then opened the door. “Oh, Chloe, hi,” she said to the woman standing in the corridor. “You’re still here.”

“I came in late today because of an appointment, so I’m making up time,” said the woman who was presumably Chloe. “I just saw the light from under your door and thought I would ask if you had any spare sticky notes. The supply cupboard is just so far down the hall.” She laughed a little.

“Er, yeah, sure,” said Rae, leaving the door open as she returned to her desk to fish a stack of sticky notes out of one of her drawers.

Chloe stepped halfway into the office when she must have noticed Finn because she stopped and said, “Oh, you’re busy. Sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt.”

“It’s just the IT guy,” Rae replied. “Fixing my mouse.”

“Oh, well, when he’s done here, do you think he could come take a look at my computer, too?” Chloe asked, as if he weren’t right there.

Rae glanced at Finn, who quickly returned his attention to the mouse in his hand, and then said to Chloe, “He might have other stuff to do, so I don’t know.”

“Do you?” said Chloe.

It took Finn a moment to realize she was talking to him now. “Oh, er, no, I can take a look at it for you in a minute,” he said.

“Great,” she replied with a smile.

***

Once he was finished fixing Rae’s mouse, Finn followed Chloe to her office, two doors down.

“What’s the problem, exactly?” he asked when she directed him to her desk area.

“Skype,” she said. “I missed a conference call last week because I couldn’t get it working. I thought it was fixed, but then I tried to use it tonight and it wasn’t working again.”

“Can you be more specific?” he said.

“It won’t pick up my voice,” she said. “No one can hear me.”

“Have you checked the default audio input?”

“The what?”

“Just give me a second,” he said as he went and hunched over her desk. He clicked a few things and added, “Yeah, here, look.”

She came over and leaned on the desk beside him with one hand.

“You can select the audio input here,” he continued. “It was set to ‘no input’ so it wasn’t picking up any sound. But if you click the drop-down here you can choose your mic.”

“I won’t remember that, but thank you,” she said, laughing.

He gave her a polite smile—the kind that almost looked like a grimace. “No problem,” he said with a curt nod.

He started to head for the door but she stepped in front of him. “I’m Chloe, by the way,” she said, placing one hand on the top of her chest and holding the other one up to keep him from leaving.

“Finn,” he replied, stopping abruptly so he wouldn’t bump into her.

She repeated his name and smirked. “That’s cute.”

“Er, thanks,” he said as he tried to maneuver around her.

“Are you always around this late in the day?” she asked, taking another step to block him.

“Pretty much.”

“Well, I was wondering if maybe you’d like to get a drink with me.”

“I, er, I work until midnight,” he said.

“Every day?”

“Monday to Friday.”

“Oh,” she said. “Maybe some other time, then.”

He smiled politely again without saying anything and walked around her to leave. For once he was grateful for his horrible working hours.

***

Finn had to come in to work early for a departmental meeting, which ended up being pretty pointless. But it had to happen every month, even if there was nothing new to be discussed.

He had a bit of time to kill between the end of the meeting and the beginning of his shift, and even though he and Rae had agreed that he shouldn’t come see her at work anymore, he thought he might surprise her with a visit. They only really got to spend time together on weekends, and he hadn’t seen her in a few days. Normally they’d at least talk, but she’d been so busy lately that they’d barely had any time.

He got to her door on the seventeenth floor, third down from the elevators on the right, and knocked. It was a few moments before she answered.

“Oh, hi,” she said in surprise when she saw him there.. “What are you doing here?”

“Just thought I’d say hello, since I was in the area,” he said. “I know you’re busy, so I won’t keep you, I just—”

“Everything alright, babe?” asked a man’s voice from inside the office.

“Yeah,” she said over her shoulder at the not-yet-visible man inside.

Finn frowned. “Who the hell is that?” he said to her as a knot formed in his stomach.

She opened the door wider and stepped aside so that he could see the other man. It was the same man that Finn had seen in the men’s room a couple of weeks back, the one who knew he was hooking up with someone on the seventeenth floor.

“This,” said Rae, gesturing towards the man, “is my husband.”


	8. Chapter 8

“Your—?” Finn began, but the man started speaking over him.

“Hey, you’re Finn, from tech support,” he said as he stepped closer to Rae.

“You two know each other?” said Rae, looking back and forth between them.

“Not really,” Finn replied.

“I’ve just seen him around the building,” said Rae’s soon-to-be-ex-husband. He winked at Finn to suggest he was going to keep their little secret. “Nice to properly meet you, Finn,” he added, extending his hand to shake Finn’s. “I’m Liam.”

Finn reluctantly accepted and gave the briefest handshake possible. “You, too,” he said.

“So, you two are familiar, then?” Liam asked.

“Oh, er, well—”

“Finn works the evening shift, and I’ve been staying late a lot recently, so he’s fixed my computer a couple of times,” Rae said quickly.

“Yeah,” said Finn, sticking his hands in his pockets. “I, er, I think I came to the wrong office this time, though,” he added. “I must have zoned out on my way here or something.”

“You were probably looking for Chloe’s, weren’t you,” said Liam with a knowing smile.

“Er, yeah, that was it.” Finn backed away slowly. “I’ll just head over there now.”

“Have a good evening, Finn,” said Rae as she started to close the door.

“Yeah, you, too.”

***

Finn headed in the direction of Chloe’s office to keep up appearances and noticed that the light was on inside, meaning she was probably there. He knew that she and Rae were fairly close, as far as colleagues go, and she might be able to answer a few of his burning questions, so he knocked on her door.

“Finn, hi,” she said when she answered, making her the second woman to look surprised to see him that day.

“Hi, erm, are you busy?” he asked hesitantly.

She smiled and opened the door wider. “Not too busy for you,” she said.

“I just, er, wanted to ask you something,” he continued once he was inside her office.

“What is it?” she said. She was standing uncomfortably close to him, he thought.

“You and Rae are friends, right?” he asked as he inched away from her.

“She’s my best work mate, yeah,” she replied.

“So, have you met her husband?”

“Liam? Yeah, he works on this floor, down at the other end of the building.”

“And is he—I mean, are they—What’s their situation?”

Chloe frowned at him. “Their situation?” she said. “That’s kind of private between them.”

“I mean, I haven’t seen her wearing her rings lately, so I just assumed…”

“It isn’t really any of your business, is it?”

“Right…” he said, except that it was totally his business. Sort of. “I just want to know that she’s alright.”

“You seem awfully concerned for her, considering you’ve fixed her computer, what, twice? Three times?” she said.

_Uh oh_ , he thought. She was about to figure everything out and—

“That is really sweet, Finn,” she added as she clasped her hands together over her chest. She reached out and touched his chest as well. “You’re such a good person, I can tell.”

He flashed her an insincere smile. “Well…” he said. “So, er, you don’t know if they’ve reconciled or anything?”

“I’m not sure…” she replied. She looked around like she was checking that no one could hear her and leaned in closer. “I mean, I thought for a while now that maybe she was seeing someone recently, just the way she’s been acting, but it’s possible that it’s been him. Maybe that time apart rekindled the romance or something.”

Finn felt like he was going to be sick. “Okay, thanks.”

“Where’re you heading off to so quickly?” she asked, when he tried to leave.

“Work?” he said, even though there was still an hour before his shift began.

“You look strong,” she added, running her hand up his arm.

“Do you, er, need me to move something for you?” he asked as he looked around the room nervously.

“No,” she replied with a smile. “It was just an observation.”

He smiled politely again as he shrunk away from her. “Have a good evening.”

“Oh, I plan to.”

***

Finn wanted a chance to talk to Rae on the weekend, but she would only agree to meet with him at the pub. “Why couldn’t we have done this at your flat?” he asked her once they were sitting at a table.

“I thought it might be better to do this in public,” she replied.

“Let me guess,” he said. “You’re breaking up with me and getting back together with your husband.”

“I’m not—Look, Finn,” she said with a sigh. “Things are really messy right now, and I don’t—”

“You don’t want to see me anymore.”

“That’s not what I was going to say—”

“It’s true, though, right?”

“It’s not that I don’t _want_ to see you anymore, but—”

“But you _can’t_ see me anymore,” he said in a huff. “Yeah, I get it.”

“Oh my god, will you listen to me for five seconds, you incessant drama queen?” she said. “What I was going to say is that maybe we should slow things down a little, while I work some things out.”

“What things? Things with your husband?”

She swayed her head in a way that wasn’t a “yes,” but wasn’t quite a “no” either.

“You’re trying to figure out if you should get back with him?” he asked.

“I don’t… know yet,” she said.

“But that means it’s over between us, right?”

“Not, er, not necessarily.”

He frowned in confusion. “How can you be with me if you stay with your husband?”

“It’s not like anyone knows about us, anyway… I mean, Chloe was getting close, but I managed to convince her otherwise,” she said. “We could just… continue having a secret.”

“Is he going to keep his girlfriend, too, then?” he asked bitterly.

“His girlfriend?”

“He’s the guy I ran into in the men’s toilets the other day, and he told me he had a wife _and_ a girlfriend. He just didn’t mention that one of them was you.”

“Okay, well, that’s his choice, I guess,” she said.

“Do you love him?”

“What?”

“Well, I mean, if you’re going to stay married to him, you must love him, right?”

“It’s—It’s more complicated than that—”

“Like hell it is!” he said. “Either you love him or you don’t!”

“He’s my _husband_ , Finn,” she said, as if that explained everything. “There’s history, okay.”

“Yeah, a shitty one,” he said. “He doesn’t even know how to make you—God, you know what, fine. Go back to him. But I’m not getting strung along for the ride.”

“Finn—” she began as he stood up to leave.

“Have a nice life, Rae.”


	9. Chapter 9

“Another fucking retirement party,” Finn muttered as he stood by the refreshments table with a small paper plate full of appetizers.

“Soon there won’t be anyone left to retire for ages,” said Izzy. “It’ll be all young people like us working here.”

“I have a feeling we’re not considered young anymore, especially in our field of work,” he said.

“Speak for yourself.”

“Fine,” he said. “ _I’m_ getting too old for this—” He stopped mid-sentence when he saw Rae approaching the refreshments table. “Shit,” he added quietly, turning his back towards her.

“What’s up with you?” Izzy asked him.

“I just, er, I saw a woman I had a bit of a thing with a while ago and it didn’t end well,” he said.

“A _thing_? What kind of _thing_?”

“It was… complicated,” he answered through his teeth. He quickly inhaled the last of the food on his plate and added, “Let’s get out of here.”

***

“So are you going to tell me why we’re sitting here when we could be enjoying more free food?” Izzy asked as she and Finn sat around their shared desk—they used it at different times of day, though.

“Even though it’s been weeks, I can’t stand to face her yet,” he said.

“Who?”

“Rae, from up on seventeen.”

“You were dating a seventeenth-floorer?” she said in disbelief.

“I dunno if we were _dating_ so much as we were—”

“It’s fine, I don’t need details,” she cut in quickly.

“Okay, but, yeah, it was with a seventeenth-floorer,” he said. “And when you put it that way, it does sound absurd, doesn’t it?”

“Yeah, I mean, they just so stuck up their own asses,” she said. “What did you even talk about? Or maybe you didn’t talk much, in which case I don’t need details—”

“We’d talk about all sorts of things,” he said. “She was pretty cool, actually.”

“So why did it not end well?” she asked.

“She, er, she’s married…”

Izzy’s jaw dropped. “You had an affair with a married woman?”

“She was separated at the time,” he added defensively. “But I don’t know what her status is now, honestly…”

“So, when you say it didn’t end well…?”

“I mean she was thinking about going back to him, yes.”

“Did you love her?”

He nodded before dropping his head onto the desk and covering it with his arms. “I feel so stupid,” he added, muffled.

“Well, it’s a big building,” she said reassuringly. “You probably won’t have to see her ever again.”

***

Finn felt uneasy again as he knocked on the door of the office on the seventeenth floor, third down from the lifts on the right-hand side. He hadn’t taken a call up here for weeks.

He was actually quite surprised to have gotten a ticket from Rae. If he weren’t the only one working in his department that evening, he would have just let someone else take care of it. But he waited as long as he reasonably could before going up, just so she wouldn’t think she could still have him at a moment’s notice.

She frowned when she answered the door. “Oh, you’re here,” she said to him. “I was just about to send an email to your department; I managed to fix the problem myself, so you didn’t need to come up.”

“Great, well, thanks for the heads up,” he grumbled as he turned to walk away.

“Wait,” she said, stopping him. “While you’re here, we should—We should talk, maybe.”

He looked down the corridor both ways before nodding his head to get her to move aside and let him in. “Alright,” he said once they were both inside her office. “Talk.”

“I just—I wanted to say that I’m sorry,” she said.

“That’s it?”

“I mean, you were right and I should have listened to you,” she added with a sigh.

“Right about what?” he asked, his arms folded across his chest.

“It wasn’t complicated,” she said. “I don’t love him so I shouldn’t be with him. And so I’m not.”

“You’re not?” He tried not to sound too pleased about that.

She shook her head. “We… We tried for a bit, but… It wasn’t right, Finn, and I should have listened to you.”

“Yeah, well…” he said with his arms still folded.

“I should have done a lot of things differently,” she added. “I didn’t know…”

He looked down at his feet and scuffed his shoe against the carpet. “Know what?”

“I didn’t know that you would become what you are to me,” she said. “If I had known from the start, I would have never—”

“You would have never what?” he asked, lifting his gaze to hers. “Never gotten with me in the first place?”

“Well… Wouldn’t that have been better?”

“For who?”

“For both of us!” she said. “Then we wouldn’t be where we are now.”

“And where is that, exactly?”

“This awkwardness between us… I mean, you hid from me at the retirement party last week.”

“I wasn’t _hiding_ —”

“You saw me and you fled.”

“Okay, but—”

“It hurts, Finn,” she said seriously. “To see you and know… To know that you hate me, when I just…”

“I don’t hate you,” he replied.

“You don’t?” Her voice quavered as she spoke, causing the ice around his heart to melt a little.

“Of course I don’t,” he said, dropping his arms by his sides. “Rae, I—I didn’t hide from you because I hate you; I hid because I… I couldn’t bear to see you so happy without me.” He hung his head for a moment. “God, that sounds awful. If I were a good person, I should just be happy if you’re happy, but—”

“I’m not happy, Finn,” she said. “I haven’t been happy since you and I were, well, _us_.”

He looked up at her again. “Really?”

She nodded.

“I’m sorry, then,” he said.

“Don’t be,” she said. “I was awful to you.”

“No, I should have given you time when you asked for it instead of just running off…” he said. “It’s just, I’m so in love with you that I can’t—”

“You’re what?”

His eyes widened when he realized what he’d said. “I, er, I just mean—”

“You’re in love with me?” she asked softly.

“Well, yeah, sort of, I guess…” he said.

“Present tense?”

“In every tense, Rae.”

That made her smile. “You really are a sweet-talker, aren’t you?”

He couldn’t help but smile as well. “It’s a gift.”

“Finn,” she said, reaching out to brush his arm. “I’m in love with you in every tense, too.”

He looked down at where she touched him and then back up at her before stepping closer and placing his hand on the side of her neck. He examined her face as he stroked her cheek with his thumb.

“Don’t say it unless you really mean it,” he said quietly as his face hovered inches from hers.

She ran her hand up his arm and around the back of his neck. “I mean it.”

***

“Izzy, this is my girlfriend, Rae,” Finn said when Izzy met up with them at the pub.

“Rae from the seventeenth floor, yes,” Izzy said knowingly, and then laughed. “Nice to meet you, Rae.”

“You, too. And this is my friend, Chloe, also from the seventeenth floor,” Rae replied, laughing as well, as she put a hand on Chloe’s shoulder next to her.

“There must be something in the water down on six,” said Chloe. “Everyone in your department is just adorable.”

Izzy laughed again and exchanged glances with Finn before looking back at Chloe. “You’ve obviously never met Clyde,” she said.

The others laughed as well, though Finn was the only one who knew what she was talking about. (Clyde was a perfectly decent guy, but god, he was ugly.)

“Well,” Izzy continued after the laughter had subsided. “I want to hear all about how the two of you got together.” She looked at Rae and then at Finn. “But spare me the more salacious details, please.”

“That leaves out a lot of the story, but alright,” said Finn, and Rae smacked him on the arm. “Okay, okay,” he added with a laugh. “Well, it started with a loose monitor cable…”


End file.
